These are emotionally charged days in America. And as we enter another election year, they will only intensify. Social media is already overflowing with vitriol, and I don’t think we’re doing emotion very well.

We don’t know what to do with it. Emotion feels unpredictable, threatening, and it doesn’t fit neatly into our Enlightenment-shaped rationality. We treat it as dangerous, as weakness, as something to be suppressed. But that grieves the heart of God. He created emotion for His good purposes.

In the church—especially in the evangelical tradition I’ve served for twenty years—we’ve often treated emotion with suspicion. In reaction to other traditions’ emotionalism, we’ve labeled it manipulative or unreliable. But that’s a mistake. Yes, emotionalism apart from truth can distort. But God intends our emotions to be doorways for truth. As Curt Thompson writes in The Anatomy of the Soul, emotion is where sanctification begins—where God’s Word engages not just our minds but our hearts. That’s why story, imagination, and beauty matter in preaching, discipleship, and apologetics: they awaken our emotions to truth.

So I’ve begun a new discipline: reading the Psalms not just for information, but for formation. To let them stir me emotionally. I sit with a Psalm, write down what I feel, and let God’s Word seep from my head to my heart. This week I’ve been meditating on Psalm 90, and here are some unedited reflections.

Psalm 90:1–2
You have been our dwelling place in all generations…from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

I feel anxious, unsteady, like I’m walking on quicksand. Moses reminds me: God is the bedrock. Even when I feel swallowed by fear, He is there, everlasting.

Psalm 90:3–6
You return man to dust…they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning: in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers.

Time feels cruel. My daughters are growing up too fast, just as my own childhood vanished in a blink. I want to cram everything in, build legacies, check bucket lists—but to what end? It all fades. Why does death loom so large over life? I feel ripped off. Cynical. And yet…it is the truth.

Psalm 90:7–11
You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.

I can’t just blame the world’s brokenness for my angst. My own sin is real, exposed, mine. Too often I’ve put God in the dock, interrogating Him, when it’s me who belongs there.

Psalm 90:12
So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Does this mean “get busy”? That’s how motivational speakers use it—hurry up, cram more in, don’t waste time! But that doesn’t sound like wisdom. Moses is asking for something deeper: perspective. Wisdom doesn’t come from rushing but from learning to see each fleeting day as God sees it.

Psalm 90:13–17

Return, O Lord! How long?…Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

This is where hope flickers. Moses isn’t naïve. He laments. He cries out, “How long?” But he also hopes. He trusts that even in days of toil, God’s steadfast love is enough. That love redefines the bucket list, the legacy, the gnawing clock. It anchors me today and promises eternity tomorrow.